Monday, February 25, 2008

Nothing, really. Except that we had a London weekend of fashion and dinosaurs. In late February we took a Saturday morning to visit London's Fashion Weekend at the lawns of theNatural History Museum and then took in the museum exhibits later that afternoon.

The Fashion Weekend event wasn't quite what we expected. It was really just a booth-style atmosphere where designers had booths selling their clothes, shoes, jewelry and other accessories at extremely discounted prices. The catch was that we really didn't know many of the names...not sure if we just aren't "in tune" to current fashion or if this was just a weekend for lower level designers to strut their stuff (i.e. Dolce Gabanna and Versace failed to attend). Steph had good fun, though...bought a great black and white Jacob Kimmie houndstooth cape, had a manicure and had Josh by my side the whole time - a magical day!

After wondering the fashion weekend venue we thought we should take in the Natural History Museum, since it's free, like most museums in London. The main reason we wanted to go was to see the Dinosaur exhibit.

They had a few amazing exhibits...many of the bones were found in the US! And we learned that Earth is about due for an ice age but global warming may be helping putting it off. Hmm. Don't really know what to think about that - neither option sounds too good.

We followed the crowd seeing all the "lessor" dinos (lesser than T-rex, of course). Then waited in the slow line winding around a corridor to see the big t-rex exhibit. And we were greatly disappointed to come across a rather weak robotic t-rex. It wasn't even a cool set of bones - just a robotic t-rex. boo.

However, although the bones were a bit disappointing, the Waterhouse Building that is home to the museum is in is absolutely FABULOUS! It was purpose-built to be the Natural History Museum way-back-when (~1860-1880) and the amazing architecture captures you...then as you take a closer look you see that animals and plants are intricately built in to the design and decor that make the detail so fabulous. Imagine an intricately designed 30-foot arch and then noticing monkeys delicately climbing it with birds perched in the corners. Yes, the building was quite amazing.

All in all, it was a good weekend exploring two extremes - fashion and dinosaurs!